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Thursday, February 16, 2017

Can you add detail to this?

From chapter on early work in the UK

Sheffield

Bender
contracted with Clarkson & Company: Advertising Contractors to circulate Food
for Thinking Christians. In turn, they advertised in the October 14, 1881,
Sheffield newspapers for fifty boys to circulate Zion’s Watch Tower
tracts. Sheffield was an industrial city with a population of 284,508. If the
tract generated interest we do not know it. As was true of the rest of the
United Kingdom, the congregation in Sheffield grew slowly. We know of an
evangelist active in Sheffield in 1890. In 1903, they reported seventeen at the
Lord’s Supper. We do not have more details.

Hudson's Bible Students in Britain associates a John Green with Sheffield. Who was he?

10 March 1906 Sheffield Daily Telegraph reported with concern on the recent 'new sect' which had found a place in Otley, was spreading and, presumably, in danger of reaching Sheffield.

On 4 April 1906 it reported on the 'Strange Doctrines of the Millennial Dawnists' following a talk by a certain Dr Randle, who is described as a former Baptist minister who recently returned to Britain from China and who was touring its cities, who had addressed an audience of about a dozen persons in the small upper room at 19 Fulton Street, Walkley, Sheffield. Randle's reply to the newspaper was printed two days later as he attempted to correct misunderstandings the report gave.

Two well known US Watch Tower teachers also visited Sheffield. These were Mr ML McPhail, who under the auspices of the Zion Watch Tower Bible Mission addressed "a fair audience in the lecture hall of the YMCA" on 3 July 1905. His subject was 'The Divine Plan of the Ages' in which he used an accompanying chart. Then on 9 June 1906 Mr Barton gave a talk on the same subject in the large room of the Wentworth Cafe, Pinstone Street. To have attracted such visits it is obvious that a small Ecclesia must have been established prior to this time, but details between 1881 and 1905 remain elusive.